Secrets Meant for Keeping
by The Omniscient Bookseller
Summary: Mis's birthday fic! A bit late, I know...it took me days to get ff.net to be nice and let me upload. Race, angst, and slash. Yeah...sound familiar?


Not mine.

Notes: YAY!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY MISPRINT! This is the ficcy for you, even though it is a tad late. Whoops. Took me a very short time to write, once I was in the mood, but the tenses kept fighting me. It wanted to have the first part in past and the middle in present. It didn't help that I went out for KFC in the middle of the really tense-ish angsty part. That could've accounted for it…^_^

Notes the second: You know, I was -so- tempted to call this fic "Race's Bad Day"….*evil laugh*

Notes the third: I owe Skitt's part to "I Am a Rock". Yes, I have been listening to Simon and Garfunkel way too much lately. But hey, who can blame me, right?

"Jack?" The older boy turns around, still grinning from something Dave had said. 

"Yeah, Race?"

Lately, he has been opening up to Jack. Telling him secrets that he had kept to himself and Blink for the past four years. Late at night, Jack seemed like the friend he had always wished for, seemed so understanding, so alike. But in the sunlight, he is an entirely different person. Someone Race wasn't sure he trusted.

~*~

Race wondered if he wasn't a little drunk. The others were still out in the park, having one of the loudest parties he'd seen so far in his stay at the lodging house. He couldn't exactly remember the reason- a holiday? Someone's birthday? It didn't matter. He had enjoyed himself for the first few hours, but soon departed, favoring the company of dark rooms and mattresses over that of the other boys. That was what he'd told them. He knew he wasn't going to sleep though. He needed to talk to Blink. 

Dragging up the stairs, he heard voices rising and falling from behind the dark door of the bunkroom. Shit. He'd forgotten that Mush had returned early, too. How was he going to get Blink alone? He stepped into the flood of light issuing from the half-open doorway, and froze.

_Should've seen it coming, should've seen it coming, should've seen it coming_ kept repeating over and over in his head, even before he had fully registered what he was witnessing. Two bodies pressed against the wall, so close that they seemed to meld into one. Staring, transfixed, he couldn't seem to see where one ended and the other began. Maybe they really were only one person. It was beautiful, erotic, grotesque, changing, merging all around him. Then Blink looked up, and his one eye caught Racetrack's.

He smiled.

The door was old and worn. Racetrack stared at it, frozen with one hand on the cold knob. The light that had been so abruptly cut off was leaking feebly from under the woodwork, reaching out to him but failing. Maybe it was because of the darkness around him. Maybe the darkness was fighting the light. He couldn't sleep in the bunkroom now, and nowhere else. He wasn't sure where he was going, but he was leaving. Walking. He didn't want to think at all.

On the steps, he didn't register the other boy's presence for quite a while. Skittery was sitting, legs stretched out, unlit cigarette clenched in one hand. It took a full minute for Race to decide that he was drunk, he was depressed, and the world wasn't going his way. It took another minute to decide that he was more drunk than he'd thought, and quite a number more to decide that he'd better take advantage of it and do something he wouldn't do when he was sober.

Maybe he wasn't fooling himself about being drunk, after all.

"Skitts?"

"Yeah?" 

"If I tell you something, will you promise to tell anyone at all? No matter what?"

Silence. He nodded.

"Okay." _I guess being drunk doesn't do anything to make you less nervous…_"Okay. I like boys. That's it. I said it. And…well…" He paused. "Skitt?"

The taller boy opened his eyes, fixing Racetrack with a dark stare that almost made him forget what he was about to say.

"Well…" Forced his eyes to stay open as Race edged closer. Pay attention to the words. Felt his breath catch when the hand strayed to his face. Froze in place when lips were pressed to his. A million words screaming through his head, a million emotions clambering in discord.

After a moment the pain is too great and he turns away, both in body and in spirit. He will be strong. All it takes is one word, barely a whisper.

"No."

Racetrack walked. He walked out into the maze of streets, because he didn't want to think anymore. He didn't want to think ever again. As soon as he was out of sight, Skittery doubled over and dropped his face into his hands. _I am not crying, I am not crying,_ he thought, _see how I have spared myself the tears?_ But there was a voice in the back of his head that whispered would'ves and could'ves until he thought he would cry flames. So he did all he could. He made a wall around himself that no one's voice could penetrate. And so he lived.

~*~

"Nothing, Jack. Never mind." 

Race smiles sadly to himself and walks away.


End file.
